at the united nations as mahmoud ahmadinejad delivers one of the least fiery stages ever. ahmadinejad shied away from the usual saber rattling. we didn't hear about israel being wiped off the map like he said in 2005 or even earlier this week saying that israel had no roots in the middle east. after eight years in power, he is a lame duck president. the influence is dwindling at home after parliamentary losses. protesters are constantly following ahmadinejad and the massive entourage of 140 people around the u.n. here in new york. inside the u.s. delegation boycotted the speech. the president said the timeline is not unlimited and israeli prime minister netanyahu claims iran is just months away from a nuclear bomb. others suggest iran is not even close. show of strength, the military

unveiled a new drone this week which they claim can reach israeli and u.s. bases in the region. the u.s. warned in the past that loose talk of war benefits iran driving up oil prices and critics say the u.s. should take iran more seriously. well, with us now is msnbc contributor, an israeli journalist. thank you for joining us. i was struck by the sort of tonal shift in ahmadinejad's speech today. as we said, it was by his standards subdued and when we talk about the threat that iran represents to israel, it's represented through benjamin netanyahu and speaks as an existential threat. i wonder from your experience and knowledge of the situation, what is the attitude in israel about iran? do every day israelis feel the same way as netanyahu or opinions mixed than that? >> well, 29% of the israeli public opinion agrees with

netanyahu but it's not enough. netanyahu doesn't want to attack iran alone. and he wants the backing of the u.s., actually, he wants the u.s. to start it, to start an eventual strike against iran. and he's trying to push and bully the obama administration daily over this. he's even, you know, shown the opposition leader said three days ago, he said and asked the rough question in the parliament saying to netanyahu, the prime minister, whom do you want to get rid of, the iranians, mahmoud ahmadinejad or american president barack obama? is it more relevant to have good relationship with them, with americans or it's more relevant to make a point and to bully them every day? and he kept on asking these rough questions to the prime minister who's seen even in israel endorsing mitt romney. >> well, let me pick up on the angle. the domestic situation in israel and affects the relations with the united states and the iran

situation because you have netanyahu clearly hasn't said this but clearly we can all say he prefers mitt romney to be president and actions and words probably designed to help romney. on the other hand, you have barack the defense minister trying to help obama with the public words and statements. >> i think brack -- >> how will that dynamic be affected by the november election result here? >> i don't think it will be very -- i mean, it might affect the jewish population vote more or less but i don't think ehud barack, the defense minister endorsed -- >> when you have netanyahu going out of the way to talk about -- present the image of strained relations and then choosing to go public and say israel's never had a better friend in the white house than barack obama. that seems -- >> when you are prime minister, you have the upper hand. you're the voice of the country.

you are the most important man. you know, when jimmy carter used to say, israel has no morn policy and only domestic policy. this time in history we see somebody interfering and clearly endorsing one of the sides and it's never happened in the history. and it's doing it in a very delicate moment for the u.s. relation in the middle east, doing it in a -- plus even his own entourage, the security in israel are not sure that an attack on iran will help israel or even would stop iran from pursuing a nuclear bomb. they're saying today that it will be very dangerous, might delay iran for some years and never stop them. >> rula, people in the region saying what iran wants is to be a big world player and getting the bomb would enhance that. using that would end that. is it time to put ahmadinejad and teheran in a bit more

perspective and understand they're not as irrational as people say they are and they understand the value of not using it? >> look, iran is a regional power. whether we like to know it or not, understand or not. the winner of the iraqi war was iran. the guy today that determined who are the -- that determined and who most of the shiites, the populations that are in bahrain, in syria, in lebanon, and in iraq itself following, looking towards iran. yes, the arab spring opened that debate about the role of iran and what's happening but are they relational? yes. they're very rational and you can talk to them. there's many players in the i ran yan political system. ahmadinejad will not be in office after june. we need to understand that. there's elections and somebody else might replace him. he's not as popular as we think.

today, if you look at of how much he's hated in own country, after he oppressed his own people in 2009, the economy and this is what people look at. he really destroyed the economy by pushing the whole world, to put more sanction on him and on the iranian central bank and ruined the country. he is the worst pr for his people. >> rula, back to israel and the united states, president obama barely discussed israel in the speech at the u.n. he didn't meet with netanyahu. is that -- are those things that israelis listen to and pick up on or is that really just stuff we talk about here? >> i think israelis, they look on the level of cooperation that we had with them and it's been the best in maybe in the last three presidency. the level of security that they're granted.

look. if we look at iran, who's doing the cyber attacks? who's responsible for the killing of that assassination program killing most of the scientists? nobody's putting -- nobody's pointing out who they are? it's a level of cooperation and collaboration on the issues. israelis are involved and americans are involved. but i think here i think there's distrust of the two, you know, between barack obama and netanyahu. his heart is with a right wing. with the republican party. he think that they can advance better the agenda. what mitt romney and many others in the republican party said about the palestinians, that they don't exist, they don't want peace anymore, they would never pursue peace, they're not real partners, this is a mind-set of netanyahu, so he's saying -- sorry. this is a mind-set of mitt romney. mitt romney is saying the same thing that netanyahu is saying to avoid going back to the peace

talks. >> rula, i want to talk more broadly about the region. there was an interesting op-ed today saying one of the iron laws of middle east politics of last half century is extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away. are we going to see increasing backlash from moderate muslims in the region against the extremist tactics that we have seen seen? >> i think he is one of the best analysts of the middle east because he's been on the ground unlike many other people that talk about the middle east and never really visit us one of these countries. on this i disagree with him. in 2006, the cartoons that portrayed muhammad in an offensive way, the backlash was so violent and that the demonstration in the streets,

many people, today in 2012 six years after we have moderates going in the streets in benghazi and in tripoli and in cairo and saying to the extremists, stop here. you don't talk in my name. you don't talk in our name. we're against the bloodshed. we're against what you did to ambassador stevens and for the first time there's a real debate in the arab world and moderates are speaking up. they're not shying away from it and so aggressive about it. >> that's encouraging. because that is the point that freedman went on to make in the column, he cited op-eds from the region advocating of no violence and pushing back what the extreme tactics. >> we need to understand that who killed ambassador stevens were not the mobs. it was a deliberate attack of some group that is linked with al qaeda and that was a very planned, well organized and carried attack. i mean, you don't go to a

demonstration with rpg-7 and with heavy weaponry. they were very well organized and they orchestrated the whole thing around the mobs but has nothing to do with the move vi, actually. >> that's clear and unfortunately it's not been the position of the administration thus far. >> all right. >> i think they played with that. >> rula, thank you for joining us. up next, heading west to ohio and mitt romney is today and watching the poll numbers head south. [ male announcer ] let's say you need to take care of legal matters. wouldn't it be nice if there was an easier, less-expensive option than using a traditional lawyer? well, legalzoom came up with a better way. we took the best of the old and combined it with modern technology. together you get quality services on your terms, with total customer support. legalzoom documents have been accepted in all 50 states, and they're backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. so go to legalzoom.com today and see for yourself.

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i think one of the first times that we should look at the polls in real sincerity is after one or two of the debates. >> yeah. mid-october. give it time. the romney campaign is only on their third reboot since the convention. we've had businessman romney. foreign policy romney. latino romney. but we still haven't seen aqua romney. >> well, maybe that's not a bad idea. it is looking increasingly like mitt romney needs to do something to catch president obama in key toss-up states including ohio where both candidates are campaigning today. in the latest "the new york times"/quinnipiac poll has the president up ten points in the buckeye state. "the washington post" poll had him up by eight. the president pulled ahead in florida and pennsylvania, as well. drastic times call for drastic measures. the romney campaign is out with a new ad and just romney and the

came camera. >> president obama and i both care about poor and middle class families. the difference is my policies will make things better for them. >> but that is a tough sell with middle class voters who believe romney's economic policies only benefit the rich. is it time for romney 4.0? so, i dug in to this quinnipiac poll and a few things that were interesting and struck me. first of all, there's so many people have said this election is about the economy. and it is about the economy. but i would put a finer truth comb on that. i think it's about the future of middle class and going back to those numbers that we just had in the quinnipiac poll, they asked people, who's -- obama and romney, who are they going to benefit, who are the policies going to benefit? you can see there 58% they have this reversed here. should be 58% say that mitt romney's policies benefit the rich. and obama's are much more evenly

split. and very few people think that romney's policies are going to benefit the middle class. so this is a problem for him. you see in that ad where he talks about my policies, president obama and i both care about the middle class and the poor. that is not what people on the ground believe and i think that's attributed to the president's ad campaigns on the ground. i think it also is underscored by the 47% comments. but the other thing that was interesting here is in ohio, the president is leading mitt romney among women by 25 points. so, early on in the campaign all the talk we had about women's issues, the focus on women at the rnc and the dnc, that has clearly been a lasting problem for mitt romney, as well. a number from this poll, they asked who would be better on women's reproductive health issues, in ohio, the president led there by 29 points. so this has actually impacted

quite significantly the campaign. >> if we take ohio as a microcosm for the country and say things have gone from not so great to pretty bad for romney in this month, month of september, two things jump out at me here about what's going on. number one is what crystal is talking about. poll numbers of middle class, working class voters saying we think romney favors the rich and doesn't care about people like us. i'm going to go back to something i said a year ago. if you look on paper chris christie would be running on the same platform as mitt romney. not the time to raise income taxes on the rich, never is. the exact same message of the republican party would be his and romney exudes top 1%-ness. christy has a middle class air about him. i think the trick for republicans this year to

capitalize on this atmosphere, economic anxiety crisis is they will have a top 1% message. this is the wrong year to nominate mitt romney. that's the first thing. the second thing is this. the central calculation of the romney campaign is economically frustrated swing voters would say, all right, the unemployment is too high. we just want to vote obama out and looking for a suitable protest vehicle and romney would be that suitable protest vehicle. they asked people in ohio have the obama policies made the economy better or if given more time will his policies make things better or failed? >> 58% adding them together say it's made it better, made things better or they will. for romney's strategy to work, that number cannot ever be over 50%. the romney strategy rests on people saying this guy's a failure. they're not saying that. >> romney needs to hammer the message that obama's policies have been terrible for poor

people. that poverty has risen to astronomical highs. he needs to hammer that. this ad was a step in the right direction. the part we didn't show where he says, you know, putting people on welfare isn't compassionate. getting people off it is. it resonates. i would go a little stronger with it, though, and it reminds me of something that penn jill let said and makes me wish mitt romney was a comedian and not a governor and sea these things. it is amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. helping poor and suffering people is compassionate. voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self righteous bullying laziness. people need to be fed and medicated and if we're compassionate we'll help them. you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. there's great joy in helping people and no joy in doing it at

gun point. it's a clever way of sort of dismantling the idea that putting people on welfare is somehow makes you a morally good person. and i think that's where mitt needs to go with these arguments. >> it's a little difficult for mitt to try to make that argument after the 47% speech and we see he doesn't care about half of the country but the larger point -- >> he doesn't care? >> it's not my job to care about them. >> about winning voters not going to vote for him. >> obviously cold meesz assage allow them to say -- >> he does. the tax returns prove he does but that's okay. >> reverse engineering to get to 14%. >> it is not reverse engineering. he gives 44% of the income away. 30 of it to charities. >> absolutely that. but the point that -- >> okay. >> i wanted to make the point that i'm looking at the romney campaign and rutterless and why's this man even running for president? there's no big idea. freedom is not his big idea.

he has no big idea and the piece of romney spending time with romney and the friends from the mormon days provides a lot of interesting insight in to this and a couple of ideas. lds leadership is constantly teaching young people you are supposed to be a leader in the world. that's one thing. romney out of the group is always a big man on campus from his young days, partly from the father's position and the family's position in the church, but partly, also, the presidential bug never leaves you. once you decide that i could be, should be president that never goes away and romney in particular has a hero worship thing for his father and he was a major player in the 1968 race so what he's doing here partly to avenge his father's loss or impress his father or be like his father. nothing wrong with that but understanding why you're doing this. but, you know, there's a weird thing that george romney said when he loses the michigan gubernatorial race, that's okay.

that's what the people wanted and that's fine and mitt romney says the same thing to nick lehm lehman. i think about what i want to do, try to communicate that as well as i can and if they vote for me, fine. if they don't, then fine. that's what it is. he doesn't need to win like clinton and obama needed to win to validate themselves. >> all right. and now one of the classic awkward segues, talking about bacon. it's getting tougher and more expensive. we are talking about actual bacon here. not the figurative stuff we talk about in politics. u.s. has a looming pork shortage thanks to this summer's drought driving up the cost of feed to hogs and cut the number of pigs that farmers raise. next year, a 12% drop in pounds of bacon per american and the cost could rise by more than a dollar a pound and not stopping red blooded americans. >> i would pay double that for bacon. >> enjoy it when you can and the sausage and the pork chops.

enjoy, you know, everything from the little piggy. >> price don't matter at my age. i'm 82 years old. i can have what i want. >> this is the michele obama nanny state plug. >> sure. someone is responsible for this. some democrat. i have already started to stockpile my bacon because life without bacon is not worth living. it's become part of my cultural existence. i tweet and talk about it. people send me bacon scented cologne. it is not just part of my diet. it is part of my identity. this has me -- >> i mean, but as you know, i'm the president of team bacon on twitter, twitter for that. we will survive this, twitter team bacon. we'll get through this without turkey bacon. don't you worry. >> all right. first presidential debate is a week away and i wonder if there's a bacon question. would a pro-pork platform change your vote? >> yes. >> we'll be right back.

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i will not make age an issue of this campaign. i am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. >> there is no soviet domination of eastern europe and there never will be. >> if kitty du dukakis were rap and murdered would you prefer a death pent? >> you have questioned my patriotism. >> governor reagan again typically is against such a proposal. >> governor? >> there you go again. >> well, with mitt romney's world crumbling apart he desperately needs a dramatic moment like that in next week's debate. that's the conventional wisdom. the romney campaign say it is candidate is hard at work considered the moment that the

average american voter begins to tune in to the election. while there's so much hype around the debates, next guest says we're radically overstating the importance. in the guest spot is john size, associate professor of political science at george washington university and author of the monkey cage. so john, let's have at it. the debates you say really don't matter that much. why not? >> i think there's two reasons. one is just that they're too late. they're not that many undecided voters left and secondly the candidates are usually so well prepared that they pretty much fight to a draw and partisans think their guy won and i don't think undecided voters move much in either direction. >> let's go to an example in 2004 and we went back and we see the real clear politics polling average, day-to-day for september 2004 and we see bush was ahead in the week leading up to the debate by a six-point average over kerry.

kerry had the really well received first debate performance against bush and then end of september tightens to less than two points and basically a four-point shift to kerry after the first debate. isn't that proof that at least sometimes they can work? >> you can pick a handful of examples but it's rare that the debates are actually a game changer in the sense they take the underdog and make them the front-runner or vice versus and the impact felt to election day. >> john, there's three natural sort of disadvantages that every incumbent president has. it's hard to find the time to prepare for the debates and the "l.a. times" with a headline today. obama's having less time to prepare than romney. merely standing on stage aside -- beside the incumbent president ennobles the challenger and being in the presidential bubble for years makes it harder to understand when people challenge you.

nobody challenges you. you're not used to somebody saying you're doing the job wrong. how's that fit in to your theory? >> well, i would say that, you know, most of the time incumbent presidents do win re-election and evidence they can handle themselves in debates relatively well. everything you say is entirely possible and suspect that the polls might tighten in the debate system. the incumbent presidents, they have done this before. they have a pretty good command of policy. they have a lot of experience to draw on both as a candidate and a president. and i think it's tough to make a big enough mistake for the challenger to actually get a lot of advantage over them. if you look at that example of 2004, you know, bush didn't have a good debate and even his wife criticized him after the fact according to some reporting and even then it wasn't enough to cost him the race so four points is not an neglible amount.

>> clearly the obama campaign is trying to set the xaekation that he's not been able to practice that much, won't be that great. romney's had a lot of practice and i remember in 2008 the sarah palin/joe biden debate. because there was the katie couric interview, the fact that she was able to hold her own was a victory at all. >> i think to some extent it factors in only as much as it drives the news coverage after the fact. even though debates are watched by many millions of americans a lot of what they understand about the debate is not only a factor of their own predispositions but a function of the way that the news coverage of it. if there's better coverage, i think that's probably going to send a more positive signal to the voters to be persuaded by

this. >> maybe it didn't win or lose an election can create a lasting impression. i think of 2000 when al gore sighed his way through that debate. it really sort of added to the idea we already had of him as petulent, condescending, unlikable. that was an idea that carried through the rest of the election. >> in fact, that first debate in which gore behaved that way is actually one where we can see two to three-point swing after the fact. >> wow, yeah. >> puts bush in the lead. again, i think that suggests that there are always risks to candidates in the debates but in this case i think it's more likely that the daebl will reinforce where the race stands. maybe narrow it a little bit and leave obama in the front. one of the political science studies looking at the debates, they had a lovely quote which is basically the measure of the debates is where it stands before the debates. >> thank you for joining us.

just ahead, the film critics say both candidates really need to see. aing l a look at health care in america. i have a cold, and i took nyquil, but i'm still stubbed up.

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while balancing the company's bottom line, their very first word was... [ to the tune of "lullaby and good night" ] ♪ af-lac ♪ aflac [ male announcer ] find out more at... [ duck ] aflac! [ male announcer ] ...forbusiness.com. [ yawning sound ] does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million americans who don't have it today? >> well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance. we pick them up in an ambulance and take them to the hospital and give them care. and different states have different ways of providing for that care. >> unless -- normally he would be in trouble unless he's running against the guy that appears to suggest we don't need a new health care plan for uninsured americans because we have emergency rooms. >> if mitt romney did care about 53% of the country he would never sentence them to a trip to a hospital emergency, filled

with disease, injuries, screaming, bad smells, crippling bureaucracy and ancient magazines. nobody wants to go to an emergency room. our next guest made a documentary out today called "the waiting room." it shows a public hospital struggling to care for its community and ascribes a sense of dignity to the er. >> we are a public hospital. we are the safety net in society. we are an institution of last resort for so many people. >> come on. sit with me. you want to see the doctor today, huh? >> yeah. >> trying to take the pain? >> yeah. >> it's going to be okay. >> so we're putting your dka in 8. putting 3 in the hallway. >> it's my first time being in the hospital. >> peter nicks, producer, director and cinematographer of "the waiting room." how are you? >> good. >> my sister is an er doc and

says they care medically and so much coming at them emotionally that they're desensitized. tell me how the experience affected the people you shot. >> well, i would disagree with that a little bit from my perspective of highland hospital in oakland. i have a pretty intimate view. my wife out of graduate school, she got her master's in speech pathology and took a job at this hospital and that's where the antenna went up for me to tell the story. one of the thing that is surprised me was the degree, the degree of empathy that the nurses and the er staff had toward a patient population that was often very difficult to manage and that was typified by cj, who's the sort of queen, i call her the queen of the waiting room who's the first person that the patients see when they walk through the door. >> peter, you talk about telling a story, when you brought the

film crews in, did you have a particular story you wanted to tell or was it more just an observation of the things that happened? >> well, initially, what we wanted to do is tell a story about the uninsured from this one public institution and in the months of scouting and trying to figure out how to compress that story in to a film i would walk through the waiting room for meetings up in the executive wings and meet with the attending docs and walk through the waiting room and come back hours later and see them still waiting in the waitiwait ing and what were they going through on any given day and what struck me we the remarkable collection of humanity in this waiting room. people who were coming together, sitting next to each other that normally never come together ordinarily and fascinating trying to capture those people on a given day. >> peter, you talk about the overcrowded waiting room, the endless wait. i think of, you know, the triage

people that decide the order for who's seen first. i wonder did you see, are there certain things somebody coming in to the er should do or could do if they wanted to get seen a little faster? >> if you're what's called a frequent flier, you know all the tricks. you know? wheeze si, i'm coming. grab the chest or ways to get back to see a doctor quickly if you know. and some of the people that public hospitals treat are the indigent, the homeless, drug addi addicted. may know the tricks. one of the surprising things of highland and i think by extension is public hospitals is an increasingly changing patient population and people who used to have private health care insurance through the job lost it and now visiting the public hospital for the first time. people who are using the waiting room for primary care because they don't have a primary care doctor and the waiting room at highland is a mash of those

people and using it for a lower acuity medical issue, you're pushed to the back of the line when someone has a stroke or a heart attack. that's the thing i tried to reveal what it meant to have the waiting room serve as the place of last resort for the uninsured. >> peter, it's a fascinating and important film. good luck with it. >> thank you. >> thanks for being here. we know doctors are essential in this country but what about those jobs we don't see? we're going to meet a professor who set out to discover hidden america, next. with the spark cash card from capital one, sven's home security gets the most rewards of any small business credit card! how does this thing work? oh, i like it! [ garth ] sven's small business earns 2% cash back on every purchase, every day! woo-hoo!!! so that's ten security gators, right? put them on my spark card!

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you're a dirty man. >> the next guest explored america for six years to learn about the jobs nearly invisible and essential to the rest of us. writer and professor maureen laskas, you wanted to gene with everything from coal miners to migrant workers in maine, air traffic controllers at laguardia, beef kranchers in texas. tell us what you learned. >> well, i learned a ltd. of the conversations we're having right now in the national conversation of the 47% or the 99% are very abstract conversations and i got to know people who are the people who are doing these jobs and what conversations they're having. and how they have a lot more to say than we're listening to. >> right. who is this america hidden from?

i think we all know people from various walks of life. i mean, you know, i have been in so many gun shops across the country i'm probably on a government watch list. crystal's grandfather was a coal miner. who are you trying to suggest doesn't know about these people? >> oh, i think that we're just not aware in our daily lives of how connected we are to awful -- well, all of these people. every time we flip on a light switch we are burning a lump of coal and an intimate connection to these people and dependent on them in actual ways. you know, who's landing the airplanes? the air traffic controllers. and these are just people we don't ever hear from. and they are invisible because they need to be. especially the controllers. >> jeanne marie, you say in your book you visited landfill workers and easily the most optimistic and contented workers the people at the puente hills

landfill about 16 miles east of downtown los angeles, a 100-mill ton solid soup of trash. what is it you visited the people working in different professions, what was it that made them so contented and what on the contrary, what made other people hisserible in the job? >> the landfill was the biggest surprise i think in terms of the mood of the worker. you wouldn't think the trash dump is filled with happy people. but in fact, everything -- you know, the engineers invented so much of the technology of, you know, what to do with our waste, so much of the technology that's used worldwide was invented there and they were proud of it. you know, sort of rightfully so and that did trickle down all the way to the bulldozer drivers. it is like look at the landfill, look what we have done. they're proud of it. it was fantastic. >> i feel like we're in an era of reality shows and daytime talk shows where everybody dreams they will be famous at least for a minute if not for

15. but you say you found a lot of people who have no interest in being celebrities at all and as you said before they're invisible and want to be invisible. >> oh my goodness, yes. think about the migrant workers, the people picking our food. eating the blueberries every morning perhaps and do we think there were fingerprints at one point on those berries? those people really need to be berries? those people need to be invisible, they're hiding. they're living in shame. they're living in the shadows. we talk about them, we have national dialogue about them, debates about them. who are we even talking about? who are they? that was a simple question but that was my question. who did they love? what did they talk about? how did they live? those people really needed to be invisible. >> you know, you were mentioning the air traffic controllers a minute ago. i have the same question, who are these people, about them. it seems to me, sort of like the extra point in football, there's a lot involved in it because we take it for granted the job is just going to get done.

who are these people? we're talking about air traffic controllers. >> the air traffic controllers are the most intense, that is the most difficult job of all the ones i saw. the most intense life. making decisions on a split second, constantly, constantly. so constantly you have to stop after a half an hour and take a break. those people are -- they were -- they regarded themselves as public servants. they, too, were proud of what they were doing. >> if you had to pick one of these professions to do for the rest of your life, which one would it be? >> probably be working on the ranch and being a cowboy maybe because you get to ride a horse all day. >> yeah, cowboy sounds like fun. >> i wouldn't mind working at the landfill, i have to tell you. >> can i have a job in the gun store? that's where i belong. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> still ahead, steve is asking if paul ryan running as romney's number two could prevent him

from ever being number one. as we head to break, "moon river" in honor of andy williams who passed away last night. ♪ moon river wider than a mile ♪ ♪ i'm crossing you in style [ thunder crashes ] [ male announcer ] if you think all batteries are the same... consider this: when the unexpected happens, there's one brand of battery more emergency workers trust in their maglites: duracell. one reason: duralock power preserve. it locks in power for up to 10 years in storage. guaranteed. so, whether it's 10 years' of life's sunny days... or... the occasional stormy one... trust goes a long way. duracell with duralock. trusted everywhere. ♪ spread a little love my way ♪

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if mitt romney goes down to defeat, there is supposed to be a silver lining for paul ryan. namely that he'll immediately become one of the front-runners if not the front-runner for

republican party's next presidential nomination in 2016. after all, ryan is a rock star on the right. ask a conservative to diagnose what's wrong with the romney campaign and you'll hear variations of the same refrain over and over. let ryan be ryan. of course, it's no mystery why romney isn't heeding these calls. ryan's policy ideas may be gospel on the right but when it comes to general election voters, they're problematic, so ryan has been muzzled and forced to play a role he wasn't cut out for. generic vice presidential nominee. this could reap ryan's benefit after the election. conservatives are itching to see and hear more of him. if romney loses, ryan can say, hey, guys, i was trying to be a team player. i was as frustrated as you. next time let's run the kind of campaign we want to run. in the 2016 heavyweight will thus be born. but there's another possibility, too, that ryan will emerge from the 2012 election ruining the day romney ever put him on the ticket. if you want to know why, you need to know the story of ryan's

political mentor and what happened to him when he ran for vice president. that would be jack kemp. whefs in his prime, he was ever bit the hero to conservatives that ryan is now. he was thrilled to get back in it when bob dole offered him the number two spot on the ticket. at first it fired up the gop base, but by the fall the dole ticket had fallen behind clinton/gore. conservatives grew frustrated and they thought the race would be closer if they would go after clinton on character issues. dole wouldn't do it. when he delivered a flat debate performance in the first showdown with clinton, the right turned up the heat on kemp. suddenly it was on him to say what they all believed about the president. in the first question of the vp debate, kemp got his chance to deliver. >> some supporters of senator dole have expressed disappointment over his unwillingness in hartford sunday night to draw personal and

ethical differences between him and president clinton. how do you feel about it? >> wow. in 90 seconds? i can't clear my throat in 90 seconds. jim, bob dole and myself don't see al gore and bill clinton as our enemy. we see them as our opponents. >> that was a mature and laudable response. it was also the exact opposite of what conservatives wanted and demanded. they were irate. kemp had betrayed them and that was the end of whatever thoughts kemp had as emerging as a contender. i can see a similar moment on the horizon for ryan. conservatives are upset and they'll be more upset if he doesn't deliver their message. after all, there are plenty of ambitious republicans who also believer in ryanism. that does it for "the cycle,"

martin bashir, take it away. >> steve kornacki, thank you so much. good afternoon. it's wednesday, september 26th. what's that stench? ♪ >> misery loves mitt. his poll numbers sink to new lows. >> the polls are not favoring mitt romney. >> there's no time off. it's around the clock kind of work. >> i don't pay a lot of attention to the day-to-day polls. >> now the british now polish people. >> we trust our internal polls. >> i'll go up or down. >> one goes one way, one dog goes the other way. >> yes, mitt's dream is going another way, too. >> that's quite a guy, isn't it, paul ryan! listen, romney/ryan, romney/ryan. >> oh, sweet jesus. >> sweet jesus, indeed. >> romney/ryan, there we go, that's great. >> stop it. this is hard. you want to try it? did i -- was i a little strong?

>> romney/ryan. >> not sure precisely what i said but i stand by what i said, whatever it was. ♪ cleveland rocks jumping jean james dean ♪ ♪ cleveland rocks >> we begin with the president and mitt romney in a fever-pitch to gain the american heartland with candidates holding dueling events in ohio this afternoon, speaking at exactly the same time, to somewhat different kroundz. the buckeye battle going down even as devastating new polls show serious troubles for the romney camp. hours ago the president cracked 50% in gallup's dailily tracking poll, leading romney by six points nationwide. poll this is week have shown mitt romney trailing in just about every battleground state in this campaign. but nowhere is he in deeper trouble than in the depths of ohio. yes, in case you were wri